Saturday, December 26, 2009

Hillbillies With Guns!

The other day I found it necessary to defend my use of the ethnic description, "Hillbilly."

I am a hillbilly. I was born in the deep south, I grew up in rural areas, places where the resurgent Klan flourished in the 1920(s). At various times I worked and I lived in the South throughout my adult life. I vacation in the South. Everyone in my family if not actually a hillbilly, sounds like a hillbilly

Many members of my family own and shoot guns. I owned and shot weapons of all sorts both in and out of the military service, although I won none now.

But, hillbillies with guns, especially drunk hillbillies with guns, give me the willies. And let me be clear, all drunk white people waiving gusn around are "hillbillies with guns."

Today, the Charlston Gazette is reporting that 24 year old, Hannah Danielle Workman's 4 year old toddler was shot in the lower leg by her 16 year old boyfriend in what appears to be an "accidental," Christmas day shooting. The authorities have charged Mom with neglect, and they're looking for the boyfriend. No word from the NRA, yet.

8 comments:

post-script: I don't find the youtube video funny, it scares, the hell out of me. And turst me, I have a very macabre sense of humor. The video captures for me what in essence is going on with these fools. When I was in the Army back in the early seventies I watched a lot of this at pointblank range, sickening waste of human life and reputation. It was the fact that I handled every sort of weapon, that I saw death and injury--that made this obsession with owning and shooting weapons repulsive to me.

I've always understood "hillbilly" to refer to someone who came from the rural mountainous areas of the East, especially Appalachia, not to someone who came from the deep South. The clue being the "hill" in "hillbilly".

The accent of the deep South is distinct from the accent of Appalachia.

You haven't actually said where you came from in the South, but I think that although your belief that you are ethnically hillbilly and that everyone in your family sounds like a hillbilly is genuine, it is probably erroneous.

Yes, technically you are probably accurate about the ethnography of "hillbilly," technically a hillbilly is appalachian--and Appalachia encompasses a broad area running north, south, east and west through southern areas of Ohio (where the appalachian institute is locacted) and south into Georgia. I was born in Georgia. My father always called himself a "ridge runner" and hailed from the Ohio River areas and his fathee worked the coal fields of Kentucky.

In the broader sense what I intended, here, hillbilly, redneck, cracker, rural-centric white people are synonymous. I'm being dismissive of my own when it comes to the attraction guns have in our culture.

Generally "redneck" is the universally accepted disparaging term, although I do have a few friends who wear it with honor, one of whom sports a "Rednecks for Peace" bumper sticker. I always associate "hillbilly" with that old TV show.